


again

by alynshir



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Family, Gen, Love, POV Second Person, Post-Dragon Age: Origins - Witch Hunt DLC, fwarden goes thru the eluvian, kieran is a cute baby, morrigan has so much love to give but expressing it is a different story, morrigan loves her son, what is love....baby don't hurt me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:48:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22161322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alynshir/pseuds/alynshir
Summary: morrigan gets used to loving and being loved. not much else happens.
Relationships: Female Mahariel/Morrigan (Dragon Age), Mahariel/Morrigan, Morrigan/Female Warden
Comments: 1
Kudos: 30





	again

**Author's Note:**

> hello this fic is useless shorrigan fluff thank you for your time

"i love you," she says, in the peace of the quiet, she says again, again. you know it has been long enough that it doesn't constitute as an 'again' statement; the first day has passed and the night has long since fallen on the camp formerly just for you and for your infant son, now for you and your infant son and one more. but there's something about saying it _again_ and not just saying it simply, that kindles a little fire in your chest, and keeps it burning.

she doesn't even need to say it, truth be told. it's not as if you hadn't known, all this time - in theory, that is. perhaps 'known' is a strong verb for what you felt. maybe you hadn't known at all, but instead 'hoped'. which is revolting, at first thought, to have hoped and dreamed of the love of someone you had left behind - it's something you'd much prefer to think of as a bard's tale, a story's silly pinings, as opposed to one of your own all-too-real feelings, but on second thought, as you look up from the fire and look to her, perhaps as revolting as the initial idea is, it was a worthwhile thing anyway.

she's holding your son, now - not for the first time, but for perhaps the third; it has been less than a true day since their first meeting, after all.

-and the first time, you'd been watching with some tangled confusion of fear, hope, nervousness, all of which you didn't fully understand beyond that no one save you has ever held your son close like that before, and how were you supposed to simply let it happen, how were you supposed to mind your own business when since the moment he'd been born his every heartbeat had become your first and most important business? but that first time she'd held him just the way you'd shown her, looking down at your son with a gentle particularity that you've never seen on her but that settles into her features with a careworn familiarity, and the fluttering anxieties in your chest had all abated then, like soldiers dismissed from their posts, and you'd thought, perhaps you would be able to understand how to look away, but that maybe you just didn't want to miss it. it. "it", you'd realized, being the two things you love most in the same place, at the same time, together, both safe and both with you.

"he has your eyes," then she'd paused, "and your nose," and she'd touched the tip of his nose gently, and he'd smiled up at her in that way he does that makes your chest feel full up. then she'd looked at you for a moment, a glance more than anything, and hadn't said anything at all but she'd said it there, in that quiet language, in the little nervous tug at the corner of her mouth, in the awe and delight shining copper in her dark eyes, _i love you, i love you, and he is just like you,_

and so, of course, she'd loved him too, even though she hadn't said it out loud, and you'd loved her more for it.

the second time you don't remember quite so clearly, but it'd been late last night, and you'd been sleeping - something you hadn't truly, truly done since your son had been born, and the uncomfortable month prior. it had been strange, then, to hear your son's telltale cries and not immediately jolt awake, having barely been asleep to begin with - and the strangeness of it had been so distinct from the dark embrace of sleep proper that you'd jolted awake anyway, your head swimming, only to see through hazy eyes and the mess of your own hair that she'd beaten you to wakefulness, having left your side so quietly that you hadn't even felt it.

her back had been to you but you'd seen the telltale sway of soothing, and the tail end of his blanket drifting in the motion, and you'd seen her just barely lit by the well-stoked campfire that you hadn't roused, and the instinctive, defensive hand that had reached for your staff had fallen by the wayside. she'd held your son close, murmuring soft things you couldn't quite understand, holding him not exactly the way you'd shown her but in a way betraying years of familiarity doing so, and you'd remembered then fragments of the year you'd spent with her stitched together - the softness in her voice when she'd spoken to the child hiding in redcliffe, the way she'd stepped forward first on instinct to catch the boy who you had fought in the fade for as the demon's hold had abruptly released him - and then you remember the ease in which children ran around the dalish camp you'd visited, and the way you'd seen mothers passing their children to the nearest set of hands in moments of need, and you'd realized even half-asleep that perhaps this makes sense after all.

you hadn't said anything then, just watched, and when your son had calmed she'd laid him back down to sleep and come back to you, had settled back beside you, had seen you watching, and had asked in that quiet language _is everything alright,_ and you had said _yes,_ and she had said nothing else and simply wrapped you back into her arms as if you were both a blight younger and she'd said it then too in the way she'd pulled you close, and you hadn't protested at all, because everything _was_ alright, and you remember thinking as you'd drifted off altogether too quickly that you had been fine before, but her arrival had changed things, and now you were alright, and that the two were very different things.

and now here you are, and she'd said it out loud, almost idly, and you're not entirely sure how to respond and she's sitting holding your son for the third time, this time he is safe in her lap, braced against her legs as she strokes his cheek with her thumb, and you look - just in time to see your son make a grab for a loose strand of her hair, white-gold in the firelight, and she lets him.

"don't encourage him," you say instead of responding to her, you get up and go to sit beside her, and there is no bite in your voice because truth be told you let him grab at your hair too, and she looks up at you with a faint eyebrow raise that suggests she hasn't had to be present for that to know it to be true.

"i love you," she says again, out loud, again, maybe to make sure you've heard it, but with the same idleness that makes it harder to parse as she looks back down at your son and gently pries his hand away from her hair, replacing it with one of her fingers. he doesn't seem to care about the difference, and you still don't know how to respond, because you realize the last time you'd expressed your love for someone out loud was never - your mother had never said it to you, so you had never learned of its value in any sort of personal context; before your travels during the blight, you had truthfully only read of it in books and had it explained to you coated in the scorn of someone long since burned by it. perhaps people in the towns you'd observed had exchanged it like some sort of pleasantry, but you hadn't listened, then, to how it was delivered, and how it was supposed to be accepted when it wasn't in a moment of intensity, of great decision - such as someone you loved trying to follow you through an ancient magical mirror into the unknown. you don't think many people have that particular experience, but that's the only one you have, and now that things are the way they're going to be for...well, you assume the next while, now that you're not motivated by a moment to speak to the maelstrom that is how you feel at any given moment... how do people express these things in peacetimes? yet another aspect of society you are disadvantaged to, and -

\- you aren't immediately sure how you got to this place in your thoughts, but you realize belatedly that shay is looking at you curiously when you don't say anything, and you see her eyes flicker to the crease you hadn't intended to furrow into your brow, and she tilts her head a bit,

"you don't have to say anything," she says, and there is no expectancy in her voice, "i'm just telling you so you know," and you worry for a moment before she catches your gaze again, her eyes twinkling, _i mean it,_ she's saying, _i love you, and you don't have to say it back,_

and you can't do anything then save what you do, which is lean over and kiss your son's forehead, and then lean up and kiss your warden on the corner of her mouth. you didn't really intend for it to be much of anything; truth be told you hadn't really thought about it before doing it, but she catches you as you start to move away, catches you, pulls you back, kisses you again, and _oh,_ you do love her, you do, when she stops kissing you you follow and kiss her again, you do, it's just a matter of saying it, and you're not sure how to say it without it sounding wrong, without it sounding like a mockery or some child's attempt at something everyone else knows how to do, -

" _hey,"_ she says, out loud, resting her forehead against yours, and she's smiling, and you look away; you can feel the stupid, sheepish little thing curling its way onto your own face, "relax. we have til whenever. or never. you don't have to say anything." and she kisses you again before looking back towards your son, back towards kieran, and you sit for a moment thinking about nothing at all except maybe kissing her again, and she glances back towards you, and there is no resentment in her eyes, there's nothing but the steadiness, but the wryness, nothing but them and the glimmer of wicked humor you know so well, you know these eyes, you know her, you know her and she knows you and that's what she's saying to you, too, as she reaches down and squeezes your hand, _i know you, i love you, i know you and you worry too much. we have as long as you'll have me, and even then, you don't have to say it._

 _i love you,_ you say, not out loud but with a squeeze of her hand back, and her fingers twine with yours, _i know,_ she says back, and tonight, sitting next to her, as your son makes another grab at her hair and as she laughs and tells him gently that he's as good of a listener as his mother,

that's enough.

**Author's Note:**

> @witchesgonewild on twitter :)


End file.
